Big Breakfast Boosts Your Fertility

Eating a higher proportion of your daily calories first thing in the morning can boost your ovulation rate and improve your chances of conceiving

Want to know an easy (and tasty) way to make yourself more fertile? Follow the old saying: breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dine like a pauper. Eating an enormous breakfast, but then making lunch and supper smaller, has shown to boost fertility in women whose menstrual cycles are being disrupted by PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome).

Researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University studied 60 patients, between ages of 25 and 39, over a 12-week period. Each of the patients was told to eat about 1,800 calories per day, slightly below the recommended daily total for women, but with half having their main meal of the day at breakfast and the other half at dinner.

The results, published in the Clinical Science journal, found there were higher levels of ovulation in the group who ate their largest meal in the morning. This is because glucose levels and insulin resistance decreased in this category, while levels of testosterone – that disrupt the menstrual cycle – dropped by 50 per cent.

Previous studies have already shown that reducing the calorie intake can affect our weight, but this is the first time a study has shown that the timing of our meals and the balance of our calories throughout the day are even more important.

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